From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 4?

From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 4?

Over the years, I have been piecing together the accurate details of West Park history. Facts are that, I really grew up on a farm, a country farm, that was about 5 or 6 miles from the inner city. The original City of Philadelphia territory was only from Penn’s Landing to 28th Street, Market Street to Spruce Street.

The whole area of West Park was farm area sitting above the Schuylkill River. But no one ever told me this, not even my parents. So, when I was about age 7, I investigated the whole thing by myself and learned that this is why there were rural areas, backwoods, live wild animals such as deer and raccoons, and even horses running out of and into the woods just behind the West Park projects, in my backyard.

We lived in an urban area and rural area all together at West Park apartments complex.

I knew that it was important to know this stuff, but I just never realized how valuable knowing stuff about West Park was.

West Park, also known as the “Forgotten West Park,” is located from the city blocks of 42nd Street to 49th Street, Powelton Avenue and Market Street to Haverford Avenue.

Many people inaccurately thought that the projects complex is located from 44th Street to 46th Street, Powelton Avenue and Market Street to Haverford Avenue.

The city blocks of 46th Street to 49th Street, Market Street to Haverford Avenue located in the shared demographic shift of both West Park neighborhood of Philadelphia is too the location in what is now the Mill Creek neighborhood (in the South Mill Creek section of Mill Creek) of Philadelphia.

The Mill Creek neighborhood is east and north of West Park. And there are 2 popular and active sections of the Mill Creek neighborhood. They are West Mill Creek and East Mill Creek.

And it has become tradition that residents of West Mill Creek and East Mill Creek, sometimes separately and sometimes all together, have rivaled their West Park neighbors.

Interestingly, sometimes East Mill Creek would be gang war rivals and sports competition rivals of West Mill Creek too. As for West Park tenants, the residents therein often rivaled one another sometimes also.

To be continued...

From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 3?

From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 3?

On the east and west side of the entire Delaware County and Philadelphia County, the Lenape lived in numerous small towns along the old Indian trails, rivers and streams that fed the waterways. They likely shared the Mill Creek, Mill Creek Country and West Park section of the Schuylkill.  

On the west side, the Lenape lived in numerous small towns along the rivers and streams that fed the waterways, and likely shared the hunting territory of the Schuylkill River. The entire area was known as the Indian

Mangenesey. The Indian Mangenesey, or Black Men, territory was the areas of, but not limited to, Penn’s Landing, University City, Lancaster Avenues, and into both the Southeastern and Eastern Delaware County areas.  

Unfortunately, though, it was William Penn and the so-called Penn Treaty Park, a land purchase agreement between Penn and my Lenape forefathers in 1683, that resulted in Penn’s new colony effectively displaced (modern day gentrification of Black Americas) many Lenape and forced others to adapt to new cultural demands.

Penn gained a reputation for benevolence and tolerance, but his efforts resulted in more effective colonization (modern day gentrification of Black Americans) of the ancestral Lenape homeland than previous ones.

Turns out that, immediately after William Penn’s death his sons ignored Penn’s support for ending Slavery, fighting for the equality of all people, religious tolerance and Black people’s representation.

After all, then, William Penn failed the Quakers.   

To return to Mill Creek Country land and West Park, when I grew up there, the site of a 381-unit, low rent, public housing project, on 11.4 acres of the old Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital site in West Philadelphia. 

The site, known as Kirkbride’s, fronts, (I will detail how Kirkbride’s, fronts, becomes a part of the complex later) on Market St. between 44th and 45th Streets and runs to Haverford Avenue.

So, just what actually was West Park, the land before it became West Park the farm land complex? West Park, an abundance of grass and hills, demographic territory and complex, at first was actually a township.

It was named Blockly Township. West Park was at first, not in the suburbs, it was the Philadelphia suburbs. I was actually from the suburbs, the old suburbs, that is.

There were many exciting changes long before the campus complex became West Park. To be continued…

From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 2?

From Van Stone: Democrat Candidate For PA State Rep 190th Legislative District 2020- My Fight For The Neighborhood Of West Park (Historical Community Site Territory) And The Origins Of West Park For Life Family Story! Series. Part 2? 

Above: West Park High-rise.

“Kelvin Jeremiah, PHA president and CEP says that privatizing part of the property can be a win.

“The site is an enclave. It isn’t integrated into the larger community,” said Jeremiah. “You know that it is a public housing site not only because of the type of structure- the high-rise and the brown brick, but because it is not accessible or resident-friendly. This is warehousing the poor.”

If elected, PHA and Kelvin Jeremiah and Van Stone will go to war over the West Park sale dispute. 

 

First things first. This is my story. I grew up in the Westpark neighborhood of West Philadelphia called “Westpark High-rise Projects” (Apartment Complex), completed in its entirety by 1966. 

The section located in Philadelphia County was formally named the Mill Creek Country Farm, and then, afterwards renamed Blockley Retreat. 

It was renamed Blockley retreat because Blockley Road was Market Street before the city began to pave the country roads into urban streets. Speaking about Market Street, for the record, Blockley Road was renamed West Chester Roads (today, West Chester Pike) and then, once again renamed Market Street as far as where the road meets Chester Pike at 69^th and Market Street today. Eventually, Market Street, continuing above 69^th and Market Street, became West Chester Roads and is now known as West Chester Pike. 

Meanwhile, speaking about pikes, streets, roads, Westpark territory, Mill Creek landmass, Mill Creek Farmland, and the flowing Schuylkill River that ran around about and beneath the Mill Creek Country Farm area, all of the country woodlands and farm land of the Westpark neighborhood was originally the home of my peoples anyway. 

The Delaware Indians, the Lenni Lenape Indians.